Quotes of the week

Trust me: every problem in computer science may be solved by an indirection, but those indirections are *expensive*. Pointer chasing is just about the most expensive thing you can do on modern CPU's.

When the GNU OS concept started the idea that everyone would have a Unix capable system on their desk was pretty hard to imagine. The choice of a Mach based microkernel was both in keeping with a lot of the research of the time and also had a social element. The vision was a machine where any user could for example implement their own personal file system without interfering with other users. Viewed in the modern PC world that sounds loopy but on a shared multi-user computer it was an important aspect of software freedom.

Sticking to Mach and being hostile to Linux wasn't very smart and a lot of developers have not forgiven the FSF for that, which is one reason they find the "GNU/Linux" label deeply insulting.

The other screw up was that they turned down the use of UZI, which would have given them a working if basic v7 Unix equivalent OS years before Linux was released. Had they done that Linux would never have happened and probably the great Windows battle would have been much more fascinating.